Great Lakes: Cumbria

Simon Rayner-Langmead grew up in the Lake District. So he knew what he was getting into when – after selling his PR business in London – he moved back there with his husband in 2019. Or, at least, that’s what he thought.

“There’s a word here to describe the way sheep are habituated by farmers to a particular fellside,” he says. “It’s called ‘hefting’ – and I can’t help feeling the same goes for people. I’m hefted to this place too. For me, water is a calming, settling presence. The sight of sheep grazing is something I associate with home. This feels like my natural environment.”

What Rayner-Langmead hadn’t reckoned with, however, was how much the Lake District had changed in the 20 years since he left. That’s not to say that Cumbria’s fells are crumbling and its lakes drying up. Our most visited national park retains the landscapes that generations of Britons remember from family holidays. Striding Edge still knifes its way towards Helvellyn, with England’s most hair-raising ridge walk teetering on the top. Meanwhile, beside Ullswater, Wordsworth’s daffodils – immortalised in his poem I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud – are still fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Look closely, however, and you’ll find the Lake District less manicured than it used to be. Slowly but surely, Mother Nature is being let off the leash in a series of rewilding schemes bringing biodiversity back to its valleys and hillsides.

Back in 2003, Wild Ennerdale was a pioneer. A partnership involving Natural England, the National Trust, Forestry England and United Utilities, it is letting the River Liza run its natural course in one of Cumbria’s remotest valleys, while native species of oak and birch regenerate amid the sitka spruce. Now schemes in Swindale, Haweswater and the Duddon Valley are changing our understanding of how a “natural” Lakeland landscape should look – and what should live there.

In the meantime, we’ve started using the lakes themselves differently. The explosive growth of paddleboarding was the first big change. Then came wild swimming. Now luxurious mobile saunas have popped up beside Coniston Water and Ullswater. So the government’s recent commitment to ensuring that, in future, only rainwater flows into Windermere hasn’t come a moment too soon.

Given all this vigorous activity, it’s good to know that there’s plenty to eat when you come back indoors. But it wasn’t always like this, as Rayner-Langmead remembers: “When I was growing up, there were only two restaurants worth going to. Now Cumbria has more Michelin stars than any county in England.” 

The pub scene, too, has changed beyond recognition. Cumbrian chef Kevin Tickle has won a Michelin star for his inn at High Newton, which is called, appropriately enough, Heft.

The Dog and Gun in Skelton also has a star. Rayner-Langmead became a part of the gastronomic revolution back in 2021, when he relaunched the Hare & Hounds in Bowland Bridge. A fine-dining pub with rooms, it’s also a thriving local hub – and has cemented his place in the community.

Which brings Rayner-Langmead to the other great change he has noticed in the Lake District: its open-mindedness. “Like many gay men growing up in the countryside, I waited until I’d moved to London before I came out,” he says. “But now I’ve returned with my husband, Jeremy, no one has batted an eyelid. I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”

So perhaps we shouldn’t wonder that there are plenty more well-heeled city-dwellers who want to escape to England’s far northwest. Will Douglas, a Savills rural director, who is based in York, meets many of them as they search for the right home. “They might already own a holiday cottage in the area, or perhaps they holidayed here in the past,” he says. “And they’ve thought long and hard about exactly where they want to settle.” 

Inevitably, in a region where the supply of homes is so limited, there are compromises to be made along the way. That doesn’t put buyers off. “Few people have to live in the Lake District,” Douglas notes. “But lots of people want to.”